Hardware shop. Most consumer cameras take a 1/4 of an inch bolt (some larger professional camera are 1/3 of an inch, these cameras often come with adaptors).You are not like to find a bold short enough though. My solution was to add a couple of nuts until the bolt was the right length.

All this talk of dollys and cranes and night shots reminds me of This Guy Tom Lowe.Saw some of his early stuff a few years back and still watch it in awe now. Can't find a copy on line of the stuff I have but here is a trailer for his upcoming feature.

Really worth looking for a hi res copy though.Here's one on Vimeo which I can't embed.

The first photo in the “Two Tripods …” post of the Auckland skyline was taken a few weeks ago. How times change I thought, as I looked at the mass of tall buildings and the super yachts. The photo above was taken sometime in 1986, from approximately the same position, and with exactly the same camera – my trusty Nikon F3 – and 35mm lens. To add further pathos, I was at Silo Park last weekend photographing Doug Jerebine when I clicked the shutter, the mirror locked up, the shutter and meter refused to work, and it was all over for the F3 and me after 27 happy years. Not worth fixing.

What a great shot. That's the year I spent in International House, more or less in the shadow of the bridge. Somewhere I have some negatives from that time of night shots at the museum and Auckland Uni clock tower. Might have to go digging.

I found the contrast dropped off over 800, I cursed myself for taking 20 rolls of the stuff to Nepal back in the early 80s. they didn’t do the Himalayas justice, mind you I don’t think any film or camera could. I used TriX more for bands and action shots, mostly Rugby strangely enough (not a big fan now it’s rammed down our throats).The remark about the cat, by the way, was actually true. A friend and I tried taking pictures of “ghosts”, shooting randomly in the dark, and pushed the old TriX to the equivalent of around 6400, just let it soak up the developer for god knows how long.When we checked out what we had, there was a cat and no way could it have been there, I didn’t have a cat.

Used to be my fave, you could push that bugger so far you could take pictures of black cats in dark rooms that weren't even there.:o-]

Seemingly miraculous stuff back in the day all right. It was reputed to be a recently ASA-boosted version of Tri-X 16mm reversal that got the ball rolling on Mother Theresa's rise to sainthood.From Christopher Hitchens’s The Missionary Position:

When Malcolm Muggeridge did his 1969 BBC documentary about Ma Teresa, one day they were taken to what MT called ‘the House of the Dying.’ It was badly lit, and the director was doubtful they could film inside, but they had just received some new film made by Kodak, and the cameraman, Ken Macmillan, a very distinguished cameraman, Hitchens says, known for his work on Kenneth Clark’s Civilization, said let’s try it, and they did. Then when they got back to London and were watching the rushes they were surprised when the shots came up: they could see every detail. And Macmillan said ‘That’s amazing, that’s extraordinary,’ and was about to go on to say ‘three cheers for Kodak’ but he didn’t get a chance to say that. Muggeridge, in Macmillan’s words (page 27), “sitting in the front row, spun round and said: ‘It’s divine light! It’s Mother Teresa. You’ll find that it’s divine light, old boy.’” In a few days journalists started calling him saying they’d heard he’d witnessed a miracle. That’s good, isn’t it? Kodak comes up with a new film that works brilliantly in bad light – and Muggeridge declares it’s divine light.